Left Alone; or, the Fortunes of Phillis Maitland. A story

Front matter

Uniform in price \ size, and style with this Volutne. MY MOTHER'S DIAMONDS: a Domestic Story for Daughters at Home. By Maria J. Greer. With Frontispiece by A. Ludovici. " BONNIE LESLEY :" A Novelette in One Volume. By Mrs. Herbert Martin, Author of " Cast Adrift. " With Frontispiece by Miss C. Paterson. A New Novel in Two I 'olumes. THE SECRET OF THE SANDS; or, the Water Lily and her Crew : a Nautical Novel. By Harry Collingwood. 2 vols., crown 8vo. , 12s. GRIFFITH AND FA.RRAN, WEST CORNER OF ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD, LONDON. OR, THE FORTUNES OF PHILLIS MAITLAND. A STORY. EY FRANCIS CARR, AUTHOR OF " NOT LANCELOT NOR ANOTHER." "The tender compassion, which every generous heart must feel, for those who are left to travel life's rough journey all alone." GRIFFITH AND FARRAN, WEST CORNER ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD, LONDON. 1879. [T/u Rights of Translation and of Reproduction are Reserved.] CONTENTS. PAGE

Chapter I. Phillis

- - - - I II. A RETROSPECT ------- IO III. ROBERT MAITLAND ------ 24 IV. THE CURATE 36 V. THE BITTER END ------- 64 VI. THE WORLD'S VOICE 70 VII. FACING THE FUTURE ------ 80 VIII. THE CORNISHES - " • - - - - - 98 IX. AT KREUZNACH Ill X. A NEW FRIEND - - - - - - - 121 XL THE " SALINE " - - 140 XII. FALLING IN LOVE 1 54 XIII. CONFIDENCES - l6l XIV. EIN HERZ UND EIN SINN - - - - - 1 73 XV. WON - - - l8l XVI. AU REVOIR - 194 XVII. A NEW HOME - CONTENTS. VI chapter page XVIII. THE "TIMES" - - 219 XIX. FIGHTING A BATTLE - 234 XX. SUCCESS AND A WARNING 245 XXI. A FALLEN IDOL ------- 260 XXII. THE LION IN A NEW LIGHT 273 XXIII. MISUNDERSTANDINGS ------ 288 XXIV. ALONE NO MORE OR, THE FORTUNES OF PHILLIS MAITLAND.

CHAPTER I. PHILLIS.

WHAT ideas do we usually associate with the name of Phillis ? Those of a plump, rosy-cheeked, country damsel, devoted to rural delights and household avo cations ; neat-handed, and skilled in the composition of ' country messes ' ? A creature, in fact, such as the majority of men picture the ' ideal woman 'to be ; with a kind heart, but not overpoweringly strong feelings ; a cheerful disposition and active habits, but not too much mind. If names have their corresponding pictures, and this is the one that belongs to the name of Phillis, my heroine's godfather and godmothers were very much to blame in not having foreseen at her baptism the unsuitability of the title which the wishes of her parents obliged them to bestow upon her. However that may be, my Phillis, at the age of twenty-one (though I think that Phillises ought not to be more than eighteen at the oldest), instead of being short and plump and rosy, was rather tall, inclined to be thin, and unusually, and I may add unbecomingly, pale.

Not that she was devoid of personal attractions, for she had pretty brown eyes with long lashes, and marked horizontal eyebrows of the same dark shade as her hair. Her forehead was wide, her chin square and determined-looking, her mouth grave, with a saddened droop at the corners, as of one who strove to turn discontent into patience, and did not always succeed. When she smiled, her face altered wonderfully — her eyes lighted up, her cheeks grew bright, and her mouth took pretty curves — in a word, she looked young and attractive. But alas ! poor Phillis, she did not smile often during the time at which I want you to know her first. I am aware that trouble and sorrow are not ' taking' — that to make my heroine really popular I should have represented her as in the first blush of youth and loveliness, and, above all, beautifully dressed !

That she should have had a luxurious home, and an adoring family, and crowds of lovers sighing (figura tively) at her feet. But bear with me and my Phillis a little while, PHILLIS. 3 kind reader. To understand her character — which I had rather that you discovered for yourself, than that I gave it to you all cut-and-dried beforehand — to understand her character, I say, it is necessary for you to know something of the course of events which had much to do in forming it, and making her what she was ; but I will not keep you long over this part of her life. It was past eleven o'clock, on a night towards the close of March. It had been a day of bitter, driving, piercing east-wind — a day so cold, so grey, so cheer less, that no one, unless driven by necessity or an imaginary duty to his own health, would willingly leave the shelter of a roof, and the comforts of a warm room.

It was a day that made every one lament the lengthening daylight of the evenings, and utter the usual complaint that the length of the days at this time of the year should be so disproportionate to their warmth. It was a day that made most people ring the bell for candles half an hour earlier than usual, in order to shorten the hours of dismal twi light, and shut out the sound of the pitiless wind. When the shutters were closed, the curtains drawn, the lights burning, and the room warm and cosy, it was all very well ; you could forget the time of year, and imagine yourself to be enjoying the ' nice long winter ' evenings of Christmas. But even under these circumstances nice winter evenings may be too long, and so thought Phillis 1—2 Maitland. She had had the gas lighted, and the day light excluded before six o'clock, and it was now nearly half-past eleven, and the evening had seemed very long.

At seven o'clock a bell had been rung in the hall, and she had gone upstairs to dress for dinner — a habit that she observed far more scrupulously now that it only consisted in changing her morning dress for one older and shabbier, now that there was no one to notice whether she performed the duty or not, than in the days when it was difficult to choose which of her numerous and tasteful ' toilettes ' should be as sumed to please eyes that thought her beautiful in either. At half-past seven the bell rang again, and Phillis went into the dining-room to sit down to her lonely dinner. There was a second place laid at the other end of the table, but she did not think of waiting for the occupant of it. Evening after evening she went through the empty ceremony of a solitary late dinner, because on one rare occasion he had come home at this hour, and finding her, as he described it, ' drinking sloppy tea,' he had angrily asked her how she could expect a man to come home in the evening when there wasn't a decent meal for him to sit down to, and had then departed in a rage.

Since that day she had substituted dinner for the late tea she liked so much better, but the empty place was seldom or never filled. PHILLIS. 5 The young maid who waited upon her pressed her to eat with attentive kindness, lamenting her pale looks and want of appetite ; but Phillis answered her almost coldly. She dared not be friendly with her servants : they knew too much, and she dreaded their sympathy. She went patiently through the courses of dinner, even sitting for a few minutes before the dessert which she did not care to touch, and then she re turned to the drawing-room. Sometimes it seemed to my poor heroine as if the forms and order of daily domestic routine (which are valuable as the symbols of the happy home-life which they are intended to protect and sustain, but oh ! how empty in their signification to her) were the one stay of her forlorn existence, the one thing that prevented her from sinking utterly in the mire through which she had to wade.

So, though the mockery of it all pressed heavily upon her at times, she ordered her small household affairs as care fully as if the welfare of a happy family depended on her. She assembled her two maids for family prayers, morning and evening ; she exacted from them the most rigid punctuality, the most careful observance of all her domestic orders. The table for her solitary meals was as carefully arranged, the linen as spotless, the silver as well-kept, as if any one knew or cared how she lived. Her drawing-room was always bright with flowers, and showed, in that nameless and inde scribable way in which rooms can show, that it was the daily habitation of a lady. It looked this evening as inviting a place as any one could desire to pass a few solitary hours in. The gas burnt brightly, the fire was glowing, the hearth well-swept.

Shutters and ample curtains excluded the dreary night, and subdued the sound of the wind to a faint moan. A chintz-covered sofa and easy chairs invited repose ; the piano was open, and music strewn upon it ; books and newspapers were scattered over the tables, and bright-coloured wools peeped out of a standing wicker work-basket by the fireplace. The atmosphere was full of sweet scents ; a little vase of violets was on the writing-table, a stand of hya cinths in glasses occupied one of the window recesses, and a flowering broom stood on the centre of the largest table. Phillis paused by this table, considering, maybe, how she should spend her evening. A volume of Froude's ' Short Studies ' lay open by her hand, but she shook her head at it ; she could not chain her at tention to anything ' deep.' The third volume of a novel she was reading next claimed her consideration, but that was rejected also ; she might want it later in the evening, for she could not tell how long her vigil might last.

Finally, she moved to the piano, and, after playing over a few simple airs (poor Phillis had no execution), she began to sing. PHILLIS. 7 What a voice filled the little room ! Rich and mellow, and of wondrous compass. I suppose it would be called a mezzo-soprano, for it seemed to combine the beauties of a sweet clear treble with the rich depths of a contralto. It was a voice that, well trained and highly cultivated, would fill St. James's Hall, and make the singer's fortune at Ballad Concerts. But Phillis did not know this, and was hardly aware that her voice was much above the average. She only knew that the sole training that it had received was five or six years ago, in her schoolroom days, when she had been wont to sing her simple songs to her father in the evenings, and be told by him in return that his little girl had a sweet voice, and should have the best instruction for it that London could give, when she was old enough to receive it.

But this promise had faded unfulfilled, with the many others of her happy girlhood. If the smart of present pain is increased by the remembrance of past happiness, yet it is something to have had that happiness. I know that if you could have taken away from Phillis her past, you would have robbed her of the chief thing that held her — though almost unconsciously to herself — above her present life, and prevented her from sinking to the level of her lot. It was some thing, nay, it was everything, to her in these days, when she felt herself to be lowered and degraded in the eyes of all who knew her, to remember that she had once been the idol of her father's heart, her future the hope of his life. She could recall his fond admiration of her beauty (for at sixteen she was beautiful, with the beauty that youth, intelligence, and happiness know how to give), his pride in her intellectual attainments that suited so well his own tastes, his pleasure in her society and companionship.

He was a successful London physician, and at his house was always to be met the cream of London professional society — barristers, authors, doctors, men who had made or who were making their own way in the world, by means of the talents that God had given them — men who could talk well, and on subjects worth listening to ; this was the kind of society that Phillis had been brought up amongst. Her mornings might be spent in the schoolroom, her afternoons in driving or shopping with her mother, but her evenings were always passed by her father's side, when he had the leisure to be with her. He delighted to have her near him, to let her listen to the conversation that was going on, to draw her into it when possible ; and his friends, clever men of the world as they were, were one and all willing to talk to Phillis ; some out of a wish to please their kind old host, some from the pleasure which many talented men take in talking to a bright and intelligent young girl.

Life was nearly all sunshine to Phillis in those PHILLIS. 9 days, sunshine that knew but one cloud. She was so much her father's companion, so far more united to him in heart and feeling than his handsome and rather vapid wife, that she could not help in a measure sharing his anxieties, which were centred on his son and Phillis' only brother. Robert Maitland was good-looking and clever, and what is called a ' general favourite ;' but this popu larity proved his undoing, for he was weak also, vain and self-indulgent. His mother said he was 'a little inclined to be fast, like so many young men of the present day ;' his father's friends called him ' wild and worthless ;' his own friends spoke of him as a ' rare good fellow.' Dr. Maitland would sometimes say bitterly that he should have a better opinion of his son if he had been less weak and more wicked — but that he had not the strength of mind even to be vicious ; his whole life was one long yielding to temptation. 'At least he is always good-natured and affectionate at home,' Phillis would say, bringing forth the most redeeming point of her brother's character. ' If he were less good-natured I should have better hopes of him,' her father would reply sadly.

Chapter II

A RETROSPECT. There was one evening in the past which was im printed on Phillis' memory with all the distinctness of a photograph ; partly because of the painful recol lections that it could not fail to excite, partly because it was the last of her old happy life. The father and daughter were spending the evening alone together — a not uncommon occurrence, as Mrs. Maitland went a good deal into what her husband called ' miscellaneous society,' which he himself did not care for ; and sometimes, as this evening, she was happy enough to persuade her son to be her escort — that son in whom her pride and delight were as great as that of her husband in his daughter. Phillis had been singing to her father the simple plaintive ballads she sung with such unconscious pathos. When she ceased there was silence in the room, and she turned, half disappointed at missing the words of fond approbation that her father was accus tomed to give her.

He was seated by the fire, his elbow on his knee and his head on his hand, and when Phillis went to him and put her arm round his neck she could see that there had been tears in his eyes. ' Father, father, are you in trouble ?' she cried, with eager affection in her voice and touch. And then he told her, half laughing at his own weakness as he spoke, that he had been moved even to tears by the words of ' Marion's Song,' which she had been singing to him. ' I thought what good would my life be to me if you " sang to me never, oh ! never," my little darling ; and I felt that I could not trust you to the keeping of the angels, for I want you too much myself.' And then, as Phillis nestled into his arms, with her head resting on his shoulder, he put into words what his whole life for years past had been mutely telling her — how deep was the love he bore her, how sacred the place she filled in his heart.

That his married life had been in some sort a disappointment to him, Phillis intuitively guessed. Her father and mother had made a hasty love match : he being infatuated by her beauty and fasci nation, and she flattered by the ardent admiration of a talented and fastidious man ; but it did not take many months of married life to make them discover that their natures were unsympathetic, and that they had very little in common. Mrs. Maitland had no sympathy with her husband's intellectual tastes, and abhorred his profession ; while the love that she had once felt, or fancied she had felt, now only showed itself in indiscriminate jealousy of his lady patients. On his side the disappointment was even keener, the disillusion more bitter. Her mind afforded his own neither stimulus nor repose. She was weak without being tender, positive without possessing judgment, frivolous, passionless — her husband was sometimes tempted to think mindless.

She had a warm side to her nature it is true, but it was shown to her handsome, dissipated son, and him alone. Dr. Maitland saw in Phillis the heart, the mind, the tastes that should have been his wife's, and the absence of which had been the trial of his domestic life. He admired his daughter's uncompromising recti tude ; he gloried in the tastes and talents which he fondly hoped would cause her to ripen gradually from an eager, intelligent girl to a large-minded, in tellectual woman ; above all, he rested and found repose in her devoted affection for himself— affection too deep for many words, but which found its vent in silent caresses, and a hundred thoughtful acts of love. Unlike most fond fathers, Dr. Maitland did not think of the future with a jealous pang that he might not be able to keep his darling always to himself ; rather, the thought of her possible marriage was one that frequently occupied his mind, so anxious was he that his daughter beloved should mate with one worthy of her, and find in her married life that union and completeness which had been so pitiably wanting in his own.

It was on this subject that he spoke to her now, as she lay in his arms, with her young cheek pressed against his grey head. ' You know you will be " coming out " next year, Phillis, and you will have to go into society a good deal with your mother, and I shall see much less ot you ; but I shall trust to your good sense, and even to your love for me, not to be led away by your mother's ambition, or by soft speeches or brilliant prospects, to marry any man who is not your superior in mind, however advantageous the marriage may be in other ways. I do not tell you not to marry any man without loving him, because you are too true hearted to sell yourself, as so many girls do ; but re member, my little daughter, that love is not everything, and it must be founded on something stronger than fancy, or it cannot last.' ' You think every one will see me with your eyes, father,' said Phillis, with a tender little laugh. ' But perhaps my worth may not be so apparent to all the world.' His only answer was to kiss and bless her.

He knew that he was partial and fond in his own estimate of his daughter's attractions, but still it seemed to him that his jewel must be admired and coveted by many men, and the most earnest wish of his life was to see her in safe and worthy keeping. Strange conversation to pass with such grave direct ness between father and daughter, on a subject that is usually avoided, ignored even, with young girls — until the mother is obliged to approach it with tender, guarded words, and almost apologies. It would be strange indeed between most fathers and daughters, but this pair understood one another. Dr. Maitland had shrunk, even with tears, from the thought of what life would be to him without his cherished daughter. The next day that daughter was fatherless. Heart-disease, with its horrible suddenness, had struck down the busy physician as he was obeying the summons to the house of a dying patient.

Phillis never clearly recollected the time that followed : she was stunned with grief, and indifferent to what passed around her. She awoke, as it were, to find herself in the little house, on the outskirts of a small country town, which had been her home ever since. Many people wondered at Mrs. Maitland for volun tarily leaving London, and the society she so much loved, to bury herself at Hamsford. The reason she gave for the change was the comparative smallness of her income, which made economy a necessity ; but there was another and deeper motive, in her anxiety to separate her son from the temptations of town life. The fears that she had refused to share with her husband on his account assailed her with double strength now that her handsome idle Robert had become the head of the family, and her own natural protector.

He was five-and-twenty years of age now, and having been brought up in his father's profession, was qualified to practise on his own account. He grumbled at the 'opening' which had been found for him in the country (and which was his mother's sole reason for fixing on Hamsford as their mutual home), but his father's sudden death had shocked and sobered him, and it seemed for a time as if he had left all his bad habits behind him, and would apply himself in earnest to his profession. But Robert Maitland had not the strength of character to be a good man. Though removed from the scenes and companions that had hitherto led him astray, there was one temptation which was as power ful in the country as in town, and under that he gradually, but surely, fell. In London he had been a fashionably fast young man ; in Hamsford he became in time a constant frequenter of the public house — in other words, a confirmed drunkard.

Mrs. Maitland was spared almost all knowledge of her son's growing degradation ; she fell into ill-health shortly after her husband's death, and, during the two years that she survived him, her two children united in the common object of sparing her all anxieties that could be spared, and making her life as easy and happy as was possible. Robert Maitland slid into evil courses through sheer weakness, and the inability to deny himself a gratification, or hurt the feelings of another. This universal weak amiability reached in one instance a stronger feeling. He loved his mother — if that can be called love which is incapable of sacrifice — and though he could not deny himself for her sake, his affection induced him to keep everything from her that would wound or distress her. Only Phillis knew how often, when Mrs. Maitland supposed him to be going his rounds and visiting his patients, he was idling and drinking away his time and good name either in the house of some worthless associate, beneath him in rank, or in the parlour of a country inn.

Only Phillis knew — who gradually got into the habit of sitting up for him when he came home late at night, so that if he returned excited with drink, the servants, at least, might not know it. It was bitter, cruel teaching in the ways of the world for a young, innocent girl, lately treated by her father as the apple of his eye, and guarded, as only such treasures can be guarded, from all that could hurt or offend her. It was one thing to have been told in former times that her brother was inclined to be fast and extrava gant; that he spent too much money, and had friends that his father did not approve of ; it was another thing to see that brother with flushed face and un steady gait, and hear his wandering and uncertain talk, under the fatal and degrading influence of drink. At first she could not believe it, and thought that her eyes and ears must have deceived her ; and then, when it had occurred too often to admit of any doubt, she still shrank, with all the delicacy of a pure young mind, from anything that could seem like reproach to Robert.

He always appeared so unconscious of his offence afterwards, and would meet her at breakfast the next morning as if nothing had happened. Perhaps he did not remember the occurrences of last night himself, Phillis thought ; how could she remind him ? But at last she was compelled to speak. Robert attended some public dinner or other given at the White Horse, the principal inn at Hamsford, and when he returned home at a late hour afterwards, he was unable to walk upstairs, and was compelled to pass the remainder of the night on the drawing-room sofa ; while Phillis, in an agony of shame and misery, kept vigil in her own room till the early morning, to prevent the housemaid from becoming aware of the horrid truth. The next day, with tears and trembling, and far more shame than Robert himself displayed, she alluded to what had passed, and besought him to be more careful for the future.

He took her remonstrance in good part (he was always kind to her when he was sober), though he treated the occurrence with a light ness that amazed her, and made her almost think that in her fright and horror she must have magnified its importance. He assured her that ' the best of men were overtaken at times,' and ' girls didn't understand such matters;' though, at the same time, he promised her that it should not happen again, and she was not on any account to mention it to their mother. 'And,' he concluded, ' don't go sitting up for me in that way at night, Phillis ; when I'm a bit later than usual, let one of the servants stay up — it's their business, not yours.' Even now, she did not like to say to him that not for the world would she have any one but herself see him in the half-intoxicated state in which he so frequently returned home at night now ; but she obeyed him in keeping from his mother now and always that disgraceful fact which it was but too often her lot to witness.

Mrs. Maitland was slowly dying. She was feeble and querulous, sometimes almost childish in her ways ; her one happiness being her pride and affection in the son who disgraced himself and deceived her ; while the daughter who devoted her young life to her mother's service was little regarded, her care and affection taken as a matter of course. Mrs. Maitland died, adjuring Phillis, almost with her last breath, never to forsake her brother as long as he had any need of her, but to watch over him and influence him for good. ' He wants love and kindness, Phillis, to keep him straight, and he will miss them when I am gone.' Alas ! poor woman, if she could have known how little her blind love and partial kindness had done to keep him ' straight.' Or perhaps she had not, in reality, been as blind as she chose to appear ; and some ink ling of the fatal truth might have induced her to give such a charge to Phillis ; to wish, as it were, to sacrifice the whole existence of one of her children for the good of the other.

However little the mother might have known of her son's habits, reports, exaggerated even in their character, had reached other members of the family. Mrs. Maitland's only brother, Sir John Pemberton, a baronet in a distant county, requested a private interview with Phillis after her mother's funeral, for the purpose of offering her a home in his own family, on the one condition that she would have ' nothing more to do with that scapegrace, her brother, who was a disgrace to his relations, and a nuisance to all who had anything to do with him.' The offer was meant in all kindness, but the manner in which it was made was sharp, and the words themselves needlessly severe ; almost brutal, Phillis thought them, spoken at such a time and under such circumstances. 2 — She and Robert had been much drawn together by their common grief ; the sorrow that he showed for his mother's death, mingled with regrets that he had not been a better son, warmed his sister's feelings to wards him, while the affection and consideration that he displayed for herself touched her heart.